TDM missions...

[Tels]

That's not how textures work, it runs on the relative sizing of the texture, if it didn't then DR editor images would not match up remotely

 

yep I was wrong. sorry.

 

So long as aspect ratio stays the same it's all good (but whoever made a 512x32px iron bar texture... I'm coming for you, tonight... you.)

 

What is wrong with a 512x32 texture? It saves a lot of texture space over 512x512

 

Sure, unless they are crap colours, i.e the pink bricks etc a few posts above.

 

Yeah, but you still have "reddish" bricks afterwards, not blue ones

[nbohr1more]

Thanks Melan and Serpentine... Those look great!

[New Horizon]

Yes, they do look great. Spring or someone else will likely chime in to give a more knowledgeable response, but in terms of textures like the "trim_lime_gothic", they may require some extra work to remove those baked in shadows. Textures like that were great for simulating depth in the old engines, before normal mapping came along. Those baked in shadows will conflict with the normal maps and give incorrect lighting effects under different lighting situations. Renzatic was working on some really great techniques for removing shadows from textures, I'll drop him a line to see if he has gotten further. Perhaps he will write up a tutorial, that may be quite helpful.

[Tels]

Replacing textures really isn't all that hard or problematic, so long as you keep the aspect ratio between versions, alignment etc will be the same.

I try keep things very uniform and using late stage blending keep quiet a bit of the subtle things from the lower res version.

 

Finding new source to replace weak textures is a bit more challenging, because you need to decide what aspects of the old texture were desirable at some level and try keep all the individual elements (if there are any), takes a whole lot of googling and digging through galleries most of the time.

 

However at the moment most of the work that I'm doing is just balancing and trying to keep textures in some kind of uniform colouring, brightness and such. There are a number of textures which are ideal for some spots, but because the bricks or whatever are the wrong colour/too bright it sticks out like a sore thumb. For example :

 

On the left is the current 1.02 version... it's quite... ugly. Matching the bricks in the second frame in the first and playing around with levels get's things to be a bit 'nicer', then playing with a bunch of random stuff brings the plaster into a more acceptable brightness to use in something like TDM. Nothing finite, still need to check in game, but a decent example of trying to keep things in line with each other.

 

Btw, this "texture replacement" is ironical one where I would get flustered. I used specifically this texture in a place to indicate "freshly brickwalled" because the bricks look "new". If we replace it with your more red variant, the "speciality" of that wall is lost.

 

Just saying

[STiFU]

Renzatic was working on some really great techniques for removing shadows from textures, I'll drop him a line to see if he has gotten further. Perhaps he will write up a tutorial, that may be quite helpful.

 

 

There already is a tutorial on the wiki about that topic. That gothic trim indeed needs some work, but since it is symmetric, it is pretty damn easy to fix the shading on that one.

[Serpentine]

Yes, they do look great. Spring or someone else will likely chime in to give a more knowledgeable response, but in terms of textures like the "trim_lime_gothic", they may require some extra work to remove those baked in shadows. Textures like that were great for simulating depth in the old engines, before normal mapping came along. Those baked in shadows will conflict with the normal maps and give incorrect lighting effects under different lighting situations. Renzatic was working on some really great techniques for removing shadows from textures, I'll drop him a line to see if he has gotten further. Perhaps he will write up a tutorial, that may be quite helpful.

 

Don't worry, a lot of them wont be going in directly - I'm moving everything manually, checking and fixing small things (tho most are fine). Some have been excluded because they just don't belong in the base TDM, others just need a lot of work to sort out shadowing, highlights or looking squashed, these are riiiiiight at the last place in my work queue. If anyone wishes to help with this, I'm more than happy to delegate a few here and there.

 

With removing lighting, there is no single method that works, not even a handful of methods that work. Most of it is about visualizing what you want the end diffuse to look like and then figuring out a series of changes that will get you closer to that point, I often end up using tools like filterforge or filters to make combinable maps. It's not tremendously hard work, but most likely the most time consuming part of detailed photo-source texture importing (the same as removing non linear colour gradients grrrr).

[Melan]

The shadows looked good in game with different light sources and directions, but Serpentine will have to take a less biased look at it, and others.

[Serpentine]

The shadows looked good in game with different light sources and directions, but Serpentine will have to take a less biased look at it, and others.

Of course! A lot of textures come with what is essentially AO baked into the texture already, even if it's slightly directional you still want to keep most of that. While the d3 texture guides often say that a diffuse map should be pretty much just a colourmap, it lacks the personality and richness.

 

Btw, this "texture replacement" is ironical one where I would get flustered. I used specifically this texture in a place to indicate "freshly brickwalled" because the bricks look "new". If we replace it with your more red variant, the "speciality" of that wall is lost.

 

Just saying

click for larger, before and after:

 

 

You might notice how it hardly changes, yet looks correctly lit and more usable as the bricks don't look foreign.

 

But hey, you're welcome to bikeshed

[Tels]

Btw, this "texture replacement" is ironical one where I would get flustered. I used specifically this texture in a place to indicate "freshly brickwalled" because the bricks look "new". If we replace it with your more red variant, the "speciality" of that wall is lost.

 

 

click for larger, before and after:

 

 

You might notice how it hardly changes, yet looks correctly lit and more usable as the bricks don't look foreign.

 

But hey, you're welcome to bikeshed

 

Erm, yes, but I think you still jus disregard my comment: It might look *hardly* changed, but the change is essential: instead of having mortar that looks new and fresh and clean, you get one that looks a bit aged already. Not that I say the new texture is bad, no it is good and does indeed fit better, but exactly because the old one wasn't fitting was why I selected it

[Springheel]

But hey, you're welcome to bikeshed

 

Lol! I hadn't heard that term before, but that is SO appropriate on a regular basis, I'm going to keep a copy of that link myself.

 

This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change."

[Bikerdude]

But hey, you're welcome to bikeshed

I thought to begin with that was some sort of back handed compliment in my direction, then I read the link...